


relearning the shape of myself

by greekdemigod



Series: Roisa Deadly Sins Week [3]
Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, Inspired by Mulan (1998), Roisa Deadly Sins Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-04-05
Packaged: 2018-10-15 02:31:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10548550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greekdemigod/pseuds/greekdemigod
Summary: She'll make a man out of herself if that's what it takes for her shot at glory. But as the old lore proclaims, 'quests borne of envy never end well.'[Disney movie au + envy.]





	

**Author's Note:**

> I feel a little meh about this story, although I started out having an absolute blast writing it. If I had more time, I would work at it until I got it right.  
> For now, I hope you'll enjoy reading this as is! (And hopefully it resembles Mulan enough to actually qualify as a Disney movie au, oops.)

“This is most ill-advised, Mistress.” His voice has a deep, resounding quality—the effect of which is completely nullified by the fact it comes from the world’s tiniest dragon, lounging in a tiny hammock fashioned just for him, pinned in either side of her window-frame. His head, narrow and sharp and dotted with dull golden spots, twists this way and that. Sunlight glints against deep purple scales neatly overlaying one another, shimmering the full length of him.

Which _really_ isn’t long at all.

Males are supposed to have complexes about that sort of thing, she muses, but the family dragon doesn’t seem to consider himself any less the competent guardian at all.

Finding no one within sight, the dragon clambers out of his hammock, stretches out his wings, takes to the air in a graceful arc, and perches on Rose’s shoulder. His talons are tiny things but damned sharp; they easily cut through the fabric of her tunic, to dig into the flesh underneath.

Rose hisses briefly, then swats at him. “You’re like a fly buzzing at my head. I’ll squash you if you don’t stop pestering me.”

“No mere mortal can kill a dragon,” he replies easily, no real fire to his response. “In your future, however, I foresee many real opportunities for you to die. I won’t be able to protect you from an army’s worth of swords... Or from your comrades when they discover who you are— _what_ you are.”

“I don’t know why they would discover me. They’ll be so scared of me, they won’t even dare come close.”

“Ah, yes, because you are ever so imposing. Willowy suits you as a woman. As a man it will make you gangly.”

Rose plucks Leviathan up by the knobby ridge of his back and flings him away. He skids across her bed twice, then tumbles over the edge and thuds to the floor. Her stomach twists at the sound—she didn’t quite mean to hurt him, she just needed him out of her personal space.

“I don’t understand why gender has to matter. Shouldn’t people get in based on their skills? I’m a hundred times the strategic thinker Arthur will ever be.” As soon as it leaves her mouth, she knows she has said too much. The dragon peeks his head over her bed. Smoke rises from his nostrils in thin, spiraling streams.

“This quest of yours is not borne of honor at all!”

“Leviathan, please-”

“No, Rose, I will not do as you please. I should have known you were jealous of your cousin for the one opportunity he has to be your better. You have no sight at all for what you are getting yourself into, too blinded by _envy_.”

Rose sets her jaw stubbornly, teeth grinding so hard they jar against her gums. Her hands are clenched in tight fists by her sides. “So what? I’m going out there, to defend my country and its people, to fight our enemy. Why should that be a bad thing?”

She has long stormed out of her room when the furious dragon finally shakes his head slowly, sighs a puff of smoke, and replies, “ _Quests borne of envy never end well_.” Then he has to put out the fire he has accidentally set to Rose’s blanket.

* * *

The wrap bound snugly around her chest stops pinching and chafing after two days of basic training, because sweat slicks it to her skin. After a week, her body no longer registers individual aches, but succumbs to pain that radiates all the way through. Two weeks in, she has to cut her hair again, because it curls treacherously behind her ears, but the shortness of it no longer feels foreign or unwanted.

By the time she finishes training, muscle has built beneath skin that has taken on a deep tan, her hands are rough with calluses, and she has made a name for herself as a son worthy of her father, late decorated war veteran, still with fondness called Skinny Ruvelle because of how slight a man he had been.

She is faster than him, more dexterous than he ever was, and quicker on her feet. They have taken to calling her Skinny Junior.

But her cousin is doing better than her, so all the small victories taste like sawdust in her mouth.

She is walking around the camp site, stretching her arms over her head, when the bell tolls. Just like that, all thoughts of her cousin, of what she can do to show him up this time, and of how she can try to get Leviathan to make peace with her decision all vanish.

There is just this; the rush of armoring up, retrieving weapons, filing into disciplined rows.

They are marched out to the bay. Sunlight glints harshly off the water. Rose has to put her hand above her eyes and squint to see the outline of ships on the horizon.

No, not ships. _War vessels_ , armed to the teeth, with so many men scuttling aboard that the decks look black with them. The flagship bears the insignia of a murderous pirate fleet, feared all around these parts.

Rose feels not fear, but iron resolve harden inside her chest. These pirates might set foot onto their lands, but it will be the last thing they’ll ever do.

Minutes later, when a bundle of oil-drenched cloth set ablaze is launched at them, whistling as it sails over them, and landing within feet of her captain, Rose acts instantly. She dives, tackles her captain to the ground, and shields his body with her own narrow one as the explosion hits.

Her first act of heroism, her first feat of glory.

And her last.

* * *

Something is wrong. She is chained, scorched alive, pulsing with agony. No light breaks through. Too much light breaks through. There are voices, garbled, like they are drowning, or maybe she is drowning. Ice slices into her. Fire licks at every inch of her. She is dying. She is already dead. She has always been dead.

Rose doesn’t remember what being alive feels like anymore, other than pain.

“She’s awake,” a soft voice whispers. Cold fingers touch to her forehead, beneath her jaw, against the back of her neck.

Rose blinks. It feels like sandpaper scratching against her eyes. Swallowing feels no more pleasant. The light of even a dim lantern pierces through her and sets her head to throbbing. Strangely, she cannot feel anything below her waist at all.

It takes a moment, but fear like icy sludge slithers through her.

“Why can’t I feel my legs?”

The nurse at her bedside doesn’t smile, or frown, or give her a look of sadness. She just folds the blankets back for her. Rose sees her right leg end where her knee is supposed to be and faints.

* * *

She flits in and out of unconsciousness. The fever keeps a strong hold on her, plunging her into a fitful rest and terrifying dreams every time she sleeps. It’s marginally better than being awake, in a reality where sedatives have run out and her right leg aches something frightful.

 _Leg_.

A stump.

Most of her waking moments are spent feeling sorry for herself, cursing her bad luck, and still as envious as ever. Why does Arthur deserve to keep on going, and not she? Why have her comrades gotten off with light burn marks, her captain with nothing but a few cracked ribs?

“Most people would be humbled by this experience.” Luisa. Rose doesn’t have to look to know. She has gotten used to the woman’s gentle but strong hands, the thick accent to her otherwise pleasant voice, and the non-sense she spouts.

She listens to the curtains rustling. The heavy fabric was strung up around her bed just for the sake of keeping her secret private. If more acidic emotions weren’t roiling through her, Rose would have acted on her gratitude, but she hasn’t so far.

Maybe she won’t ever. The bad mood might persist exactly as long as the disappearance of the better part of her leg keeps up.

“I’m not most people,” she whispers back.

Another thing going against her: her body takes so slow to heal. She is not entirely sure how long she has been stuck in this bed, growing pallid and weak, nor how long recovery for burned skin and amputation is supposed to last, but probably not this long.

She should’ve been out there already.

... but then what?

Rose snorts disgustedly and rolls onto her side, away from Luisa. “And I’m tired.”

“You can sleep when I’m done refreshing your bandages.”

* * *

Luisa does not bow to her bad moods. She will do what she has to, steadfast as always, smiling almost sardonically at all her outbursts and fits, her rambling on how she doesn’t deserve this, her envy strong as ever.

But it could be different. The mornings she wakes up lethargic, without any strength in her to bite back at all, Luisa sits by her side and tells her stories, sings her songs, and updates her on the state of the war. When Rose then finally finds it in her to be nasty, Luisa just walks away.

It’s because she has no one else for company, she tells herself. It’s because she wants to prove Luisa wrong, she tells herself. It’s because she _isn’t_ a small child that needs to be disciplined, she tells herself.

Not because seeing Luisa smile is the only spark of warmth and positivity she has felt since she ended up here—maybe even since long before that.

Rose starts trying better. She holds her tongue, lifts her body up on arms that tremble with the effort so Luisa can move the bandage more easily beneath her thigh, and listens.

“I really don’t deserve this, though,” she murmurs one day, head propped up on her hand. It is whispered, not sulkily but matter-of-factly.

Brown eyes look at her briefly, then cast back down to the thick book Luisa has in her lap. “Don’t you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” This _does_ sound sulky, more than a little offended. Her eyebrows knit together tightly. “I’m a good person!”

“A good person would have asked after their dragon already.”

That takes the wind out of her. _Leviathan_. All this time, she has not thought of him once... not wondered what became of him, where he went. If he’s still alive. Shivering, feeling dreadful, she finally asks, “Where is he?”

“Why,” Luisa smiles widely, “he’s been waiting all this time, of course.”

* * *

They have fashioned a crutch for her. It digs painfully into her arm, but she is grateful for the chance to move about and breathe fresh air once more. The field hospital is no more than a clutter of rough, brown tents in a grove of the forest lining around the cliffs of the harbor, but it is tidy and lively. Doctors and nurses mingle with groups of soldiers, flattening the grass even more beneath their feet.

The ground is packed hard enough that she can balance on it well enough. The crutch doesn’t sink into the sand but carries her ahead. After a few minutes she has worked up a sheen of sweat, but she’s starting to get the hang of how to walk it.

And more than that, she feels giddy with the victory of it. No competition, no attempt to better than someone. Just something she is getting good at.

Maybe she wasn’t such a good person after all. Before. But _After_ , she can become better.

The first step is going to be groveling for Leviathan’s forgiveness.

She hears his trumpeting, the beat of his strong wings, and almost hops the last part just to get to him already. Tears stand in her eyes when she gets to a wider clearing in the forest where Leviathan soars in long, languid circles on wings fully outstretched.

He is beautiful, and not alone.

A female, navy blue dragon is flying in his wake. She is bigger than him, but more intricate regardless. Her biggest scale is about the size of Rose’s hand, the smallest ones, she notices when she is introduced, are as small as a grain of sand, layered around her eyes and mouth. She glints silver in the light.

“This is Adey. She is... you humans would call her my sister.”

Rose finds no anger or contempt or disgust in Leviathan’s gaze. It has always been difficult to read dragons, whose emotions are at once more complicated and more simple than those of a human, but he seems... _happy_.

“Hello, old friend,” she murmurs, extending her arm. It looks even more pale and skinny in the unforgiving sunlight.

Leviathan cocks his head, then hops onto her wrist. “Mistress.”

“Levi, I’m afraid I have made a terrible mistake.”

“And I have failed in protecting you, Mistress. Rose. I have failed you. But we shall put it to rights, shall we not?”

“Yes, I think we shall.”

* * *

Luisa is sitting by her bedside one more time. After refreshing her bandages for the trip home, she just about plucked Leviathan from the air and draped him in her lap. He has never been petted before, but his purring reveals that he doesn’t take badly to it at all. Luisa keeps honoring her with those beautiful smiles Rose will miss so once she leaves.

She no longer winces at the sight of her leg — she has let go of what she expects her body to be, and accepted that this is the new shape of her. The burn scars on her arms and stomach are starting to blend into her landscape of freckles.

With some effort, she gets on the pair of trousers put out for her. She wanted to do it herself and glows with pride when she sits back down hard, but gets to look down at a job well done.

“Levi, do you think you could pass by the battlefield before we go? I... I’d like to know how Arthur is doing. I want to know if he’s safe.”

The dragon sighs, but takes to the air. He bows to Luisa before he leaves though; she smiles even wider, even more beautifully. Rose feels her heart lurch.

“Adey, I finally finished the letter. Would you thank your family for lending me your aid, too?”

Adey has another redhead woman to return to, but instead she will deliver a letter she has penned to her captain, to thank him most earnestly for the medal he has granted her for saving his life, and offering her services in any way she could be useful. Her strategic thinking would suit well on the army’s council, but she won’t boast. Let him use her capacities the way he sees fit, for then it will truly be earned.

Her thoughts are starting to sound a lot like Leviathan’s.

When both dragons have gone, it’s just Rose and Luisa left. The latter has sunk onto her knees in front of the bed, to roll up the excess of pants leg and pin it securely. It brushes uncomfortably against the sensitive skin, but it’s necessary she builds calluses there now.

“Rose, you have to promise me never to pretend to be something you’re not again.” Luisa rises slowly, puts her hands on Rose’s cheeks, and smiles down on the seated woman. “You aren’t so bad just as you are.”

The kiss is unexpected; soft, warm, invigorating.

“Can I come visit you sometime?”

“If you don’t lose another leg for it.”

Rose grins. “I'll try my best not to.”

"Then I would like that very much."

* * *

The journey ahead of her will be a long one. The bag on her back already feels like too heavy a burden to bear. The crutch is wobbly and crudely padded.

But, she reminds herself, her cousin is alive and doing well. Leviathan is flying next to her, prattling about how they are going to redeem themselves, the good they are going to do. He has assured her that her family doesn’t care about her leaving, as long as she just comes home.

Once she has her life all sorted out, there’s a nurse who deserves the best dinner of her life.

And it’s a beautiful day.

What more could she possibly want?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
